


he cannot meet his master's eyes

by vonquixote (propergoffick)



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Body Horror, Cybernetics, Dominance, Genital Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 20:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13349073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffick/pseuds/vonquixote
Summary: After 'Planet of Fire', the Fifth Doctor suffers a crisis of conscience and builds himself an android Master. They try to set some boundaries and terms. It doesn't go too well.





	he cannot meet his master's eyes

**Author's Note:**

> More old fic. I still wasn't comfortable with M/M fic, but if I threw enough stylistic experiments around, maybe... I could be?

There are advantages to being Lord President of Gallifrey. They may be few and far between, but they do include access to the farthest reaches of the Matrix, including the biographical imprints of generation upon regeneration of Time Lords.  
  
The Master's record is somewhat patchy and incomplete, but the Doctor has nobody to blame for that but himself: he wrote it. Not for the first time, he curses the Master's sporadic attacks of competence - why can't the man have the decency to leave a paper trail? The Doctor could hardly have gone and put everything he remembered about the Master into the official records. He'd never have heard the end of it.  
  
Still, he has the imprint, and at the cost of only one boring meeting and a brief, comparatively exciting discussion with Flavia about his chronic irresponsibility in having left in the first place. Building something to put it in ~~ridding yourself of the ruins of Kamelion~~  was child's play.

It's kept his mind off things ~~like Traken, and fire, and a third of the universe freezing into entropic oblivion, and the Master, burning~~.  
  
The Doctor wipes his brow, takes off and folds up his apron - very important, that, oil and cricket whites are a disaster waiting to happen. He touches a control. The android lurches into - not life, not any more, don't think of it as life. Activity. Operation. Its face twitches as the imprint loads, and then forms into something halfway between a scowl and a smile.  
  
“Doctor?”  
  
“Master.”  
  
“I... how strange. I remember... the Ogrons. I shot you – and then I ran. And you appear to have regenerated. My responsibility?” The smile spreads a little wider, and the Doctor almost falls off the workbench he's leaning on. It's him. It's him like he used to be.  
  
“Um... in a manner of speaking, yes.” ~~And he can never know how. He must never know how.~~  
  
“Which leaves us with the question of how I came to be here. And why I don't appear to be able to move. Your responsibility?”  
  
The Doctor flinches, visibly, and it's all he can do not to cry out 'yes' and throw himself on the Master's mercy. “Whatever makes you say that?”  
  
“Because I'm in a chair, wearing a dressing gown and not very much else, in what appears to be a TARDIS, and you are here. The process of deduction completes itself.”  
  
The Doctor stares, for a moment. ~~He must never know what he has done – what _we_ have done. It's too much.~~  “You died. Properly. I don't know how it happened.”  
  
“Except that I evidently did not.”  
  
“You died. And I... well, I suppose I brought you back to life.”  
  
“It's happened, hasn't it? You've finally snapped. I could have sworn I didn't shoot you in the head, you know.”  
  
“Could you at least try to take my word for it?”  
  
The Master considers him. “I would appear to have no choice. Am I to assume that my lack of mobility is an intentional feature of my miraculous resurrection?”  
  
“No,” says the Doctor. “I just haven't finished the legs.”  
  
The Master looks down, and what the Doctor can see of his face spasms wide.  
  
“What is this?” he snarls, and the words embed themselves in the Doctor's soul with an almost physical force. ~~It's him like he always was, deep down.~~  “What have you done?”  
  
“Ensured your continued existence,” says the Doctor, trying to be cold. “I stole your biographical imprint from Gallifrey and installed it in an android body. It was that or - ”  
  
“Or what, Doctor? What could possibly have possessed you to - ”  
  
~~Because I couldn't bear to see what you'd become.~~  
~~Because I couldn't live with what you'd become.~~  
~~Because I couldn't save you.~~  
~~Because I wouldn't save you.~~  
~~Because I~~  
  
“Because a cosmos without you doesn't bear thinking about.”  
  
The Master's face convulses again, this time more in disgust than horror. “This is not me, Doctor. This... simulacrum. It isn't me.”  
  
“You were on your last regeneration. What do you think happens next?”  
  
“I would have survived it.”  
  
“Undoubtedly.” ~~But at what cost? Your body? Tremas'? Every living soul in the Traken Union and uncounted other worlds besides?~~  “But now you'll never have to know, will you?” ~~And perhaps, with time, I can forget.~~  
  
The Master seems to be considering the Doctor's point. His scowl relaxes into a mere frown. “I suppose there are other terms.”  
  
“Naturally. You won't be able to leave or pilot the TARDIS without me.”  
  
“So this derelict vessel is to be my prison?”  
  
“A prison nearly infinite in space and, since – well, since a recent incident, substantially unexplored. Plenty to do.”  
  
The Master's frown flattens out entirely – in repose, he's disconcertingly neutral, with none of the little involuntary movements an organic being would have had. ~~Too much like Kamelion for comfort.~~ Need to fix that.  
  
“Once again, I would appear to be denied the luxury of choice.”  
  
“Jolly good.” The Doctor stood up, pressed his hands together, licked his lips and finally came out with the sentiment that was damming up in his mind. “One more thing. I'm going to have to switch you off.”  
  
“Genuinely unacceptable. You wouldn't switch the real me off - “  
  
“This is the real you. Now.” ~~Now that cackling madman in borrowed skin who'd burn whole worlds, rip open the universe, do _anything_  to extend his own sham of a life is dead. That wasn't you. This is more you than you were. It wasn't you.~~  
  
“Precisely, which is why you are not going to switch this me off.”  
  
“I need to make some modifications to your motor circuits.”  
  
“Please feel free. It's not as if I can feel pain.”  
  
“Actually, you can.” ~~The last occupant of your body certainly could.~~  
  
“Really.” The Master's eyes roll. “Would you care to inform me about the other sundry, sordid little obsolescences you've no doubt seen fit to burden me with?”   
  
“If you could be patient for just a  _little_  while, Master, I might go so far as to show you.”  
  
It's been a while since the Doctor has been this close to the Master. There was such a place as Castrovalva, but neither of them were strictly themselves at the time – the irony of it catches in the Doctor's throat, and in his hearts, and he gives a little cough and a modest smile as he parts the Master's legs. The Master's eyebrows quirk upwards, and when he moves, it's like he's really real.  
  
“I assume you've a reason for not doing this before you... activated me.”  
  
“Efficiency,” says the Doctor, staying professional. “I wanted to make sure the imprint installed itself properly before I went around doing any unnecessary fine-tuning.” His sonic screwdriver whirrs and the Master's inner thigh disconnects smoothly from his groin, the warm flesh tones fading from the joint outwards into dull, default silver. The Doctor's fingers find their way to the top of the panel and, in his defence, only linger slightly too long before peeling it away to expose the bunches of hydraulics and circuitry coiled beneath. He doesn't see the Master's functional upper body tense slightly, but he hears it in the voice, a slight quaver, a discord in the mellifluous tones.  
  
“Of course you did. And the dazzling concept that I would never suffer myself to be deactivated while you finished the job entirely failed to cross your mind.”  
  
“Believe it or not,” says the Doctor, carefully inserting a neutron ram into the Master's crotch and switching it on, “it did.” The Master roars with pain, head flying back and arms jerkily clutching at empty air. “That should have cut off some of the positronic pathways to your lower body. Hurts, doesn't it?”  
  
“Like... burning...” The Master's head lolls forward. “You... pain receptors... very good...”  
  
~~He lost you at 'burning'.~~  The Doctor's eyes grow hot. ~~You walked away before.~~  He lays a hand on the Master's intact thigh, and takes one of the Master's hands in the other.  
  
“I'm sorry. Look, let me switch your body off, just for - ”  
  
“ _Never_.” The Master's eyes snap open and his hand closes tight around the Doctor's, warm and crushingly strong and measured just short of truly painful. On his knees in front of the Master, the Doctor cannot look away in time, and meets the Master's inferno head-on. The Master's eyes shimmer, hazy golden brown, and for the first time in quite some time the Doctor realises how much he deserves his name, and how easily the obedience he demands is won. “One condition, Doctor, and with that condition met I will accept your offer of continued existence gladly. I will live as your prisoner, if I must, but I will live. Do you understand?”  
  
The Doctor wilts, finally, slumps his shoulders in defeat and looks away, closes off his mind and memories, surrenders the fight but retains his high ground. ~~He must. Not. Know.~~ “I do.”  
  
“Now, do what you have to do.”  
  
It's easier, after that. The initial shock acts as a kind of anaesthetic, and with the Master deprived of sensation it's easier to treat the task as just that. The Doctor hooks in positronic pathways, bypasses damaged circuits whilst making a mental note to replace them eventually, checks fluid links and capacitors, and takes the opportunity to explain that the Master will be able to modify his physical form around a particular template - “your usual,” he says, with almost no irony whatsoever. As the adjustments move further and further out the Master makes more and more suggestions, studying the internal workings of his own fingers and toes and arms and legs until, finally, the Doctor wipes his brow and claims the work is done.  
  
“Try to walk,” he says. The Master rises with phenomenal grace and precision, limbs unfolding slowly to stand. His first few tottering steps shred his dignity completely and he stumbles, into the Doctor's outstretched arms.  
  
“How terribly unflattering,” he mutters into the Doctor's jumper. Fortunately for both of them, he cannot see the Doctor smiling as he slips his arm under the Master's and helps him from the workshop, almost carrying him, letting him find a rhythm. Gradually, they shift more and more weight onto the Master's feet, and by the time they're in the TARDIS wardrobe and looking for the dark suit the Doctor knows is in there somewhere, they're walking arm in arm like seven hundred years have simply failed to pass.  
  
“You realise I'm bound to attempt escape at the first possible opportunity,” the Master says, as he sorts through the fourth or fifth coat-rack.  
  
“Well, of course you are. You wouldn't be you if you didn't.” The Doctor smiles, ~~do I dare? Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time...~~  and turns into the Master's path. “I shall just have to ensure you don't want to leave.”  
  
The Master chuckles, with only an echo of worlds frozen and the universe gambled against itself, and takes the Doctor's other arm, drawing him close,  ~~… for decisions and revisions which a minute can reverse~~ , thinks the Doctor, in an inner voice that's not his own, and as the cool quicksilver mind of the Master rushes up and through his fragile defences and coats his soul in burning chrome, the Doctor bars off what he can, reconstructs the brittle coral matrix of his own mind around his recent memories. ~~He's a Time Lord! In many ways we have the same mind...~~  
  
By the time their bodies follow through on what their minds are already doing it's far too late for the Doctor to wonder if this was really such a good idea, so soon. The Master's hands creep under his frock coat and explore his ribs and the lines of his back – the Doctor moves only to allow the Master further in, aware that he knows the body in his arms inside out and outside in, letting the Master catch up. The frock coat is gently pushed from his shoulders and the cricket jumper soon follows it, and the Master's rapacious hands begin to grip tighter and the Doctor's hands tangle in his hair because there's only so much egalitarianism you can ensure, really. The Doctor draws in a high cold breath, head tilted back as the Master nuzzles into his throat, and grins at the ceiling in a kind of triumph.  
  
It's while he's frantically unbuttoning his shirt and unclipping his braces that the Doctor realises the Master's naked, abusing the capacity of his chameleonic skin already. There's a faint silver sheen to him which the Doctor isn't entirely sure he likes, and it's certainly no fun for either of them if his clothes are just going to disappear. They tumble into the pile of coats that's accumulated around the rack, and the Doctor squirms onto something large and furry and above all comfortable, and the Master gives a faint telepathic sigh and promises he'll get dressed eventually, even as his lips busy themselves with creeping down the Doctor's belly. The Doctor closes his eyes and closes his mind and makes the Master keep this physical, outside a mind he can't be allowed to read. The Master's hands squeeze tighter, whether in desire or in frustration, before they unbutton the Doctor's trousers and peel them away.  
  
When it's over, the Doctor sighs, and the Master tugs himself upright using the nearest coat. The Doctor dresses, slowly, as the Master silently paces along the racks of clothes, occasionally pulling something out, only to tut and toss it back to the floor. Eventually, he comes across a long black velvet coat, which he shrugs onto his shoulders and wraps tight around himself. It's almost comically oversized, hanging down over his hands and more enveloping him than clothing him. ~~On a taller man, it might look more imposing...~~  
  
“I'm glad we know where we stand,” says the Master, eventually, “at last.”  
  
“That wasn't the only...”  
  
“I'm sure you had the very best of reasons, of which this was only one. I'm equally sure that you've chosen not to share them. Permit me to make the best of what I'm told.”  
  
“There's nothing else to tell.”  
  
“I'm sure there isn't.”  
  
“I,” says the Doctor finally, “am going for a walk. Outside. I suggest you do something about that ridiculous coat.”  
  
“I'm no manner of tailor, Doctor. It would be a shame to...”  
  
“Then perhaps you should adjust yourself to fit.”


End file.
